One of the many tributes in the book made a parallel between the author and another, who also wrote a book at 90.

“By publishing her autobiography at the age of 90, Mama has joined the pantheon of 90-year-old authors in the world,” the tribute by Pastors Kenny and Wale Adeduro went.  ”That includes the Sri Lankan 90-year-old author, Sybil Wettasinghe, author of Umbrella Thief, a classic children’s book.”

Indeed, Umbrella Thief is one of the more than 200 books in the children fiction genre, from the fecund Sybil Wettasinghe (1927-2020), who lived for 92 years, “harvesting” books, from her fertile mind, all through her life.

But the vital difference: Sybil Wettasinghe was a celebrated, decorated writer.  Bernice Olawunmi Ifaturoti wrote her first-ever book, Daughter of Grace, at 90 — her peaks of pleasure; her dales of despair.  Yet, on balance, a surfeit of grace.

This autobiography is salute to a humble, primary school retiree, zestful teacher of her beloved Mathematics, yet all her life a voracious reader.

It is ode to a rare clarity of mind when human organs are no longer tick-tock — intellect craving to be tested, when the natural elements are far from their prime.

Still, given the book’s theme, a more enduring parallel would be to Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, two epic poems by English man, John Milton (1608-1674).

But that would only be metaphorically speaking.

Milton’s works belonged to the era of classical poems: the first set of English epics (English then no more than the local, humble tongue of the hardy folks of the British Isles), playing hard catch-up with the cosmopolitan Greek and Latin, the two that ruled the globe, in literature, general scholarship and even the royal courts.

Ifaturoti’s Daughter of Grace is only but a lean autobiography, in simple, precise and concise prose, by an old woman determined to share her ups and downs with the world, as her 90th birthday gift.

For the author aged 57, it was “paradise lost” when her darling husband, around whom her entire world revolved, died.  The sheer drama of it all was nerve-shattering!

That day began with fulsome promise.  Yet, it ended with the most barren of despairs!  With absolutely no warning, Peter Adeyeye Ifaturoti was gone — no thanks to robbers that attacked his car and cut short his life.

The widow would freeze that anguish of 1989: “There on the bare floor, the lifeless body of my husband lay, in the pool of his own blood,” she wrote. “He died, aged 64.”

Irony of ironies: earlier at lunch time, in his characteristic lunch-time chat from work, her husband had told the last of their daughters, who picked his call because her mom was out: “It’s okay.  I’ll be seeing you later …”  That never happened.

Still, Ifaturoti would begin her new life of “paradise regained”, just five months after her husband’s cruel passage of November 1989, though she was in no position to know.

She captioned that decisive phase of her life: “Easter 1990: the Redeemed years”.

It was a new beginning: the anguished loss of a beloved husband replaced by a yearning soul that doted on and swooned after God, bolstered by new church work, in her newfound creed.

That would anchor the life of a grieving and broken 57-year-old widow, and romp her into a 90-year-old matriarch — and still counting!  Paradise lost, paradise regained!  It was, in mid-life, a brand new life!

Back in Ilesa, their hometown in Osun, the Ifaturotis and the Fagbemis (Bernice Ifaturoti’s maiden family) were ardent Christians, though steeped in Ijesa tradition.

The Ifaturotis are royals, scions of one of the four branches of the Atakumosa ruling house of Ilesa: the Bilayearere, though their immediate clan is called Bilasa.

The other ruling branches are Biladu, Bilaro and Bilagbayo.  The Bilayearere produced the current Owa Obokun, Oba Adekunle Aromolaran, though an Ifaturoti (Prince Adebayo Ifaturoti, now late) contested that stool.

The Fagbemis, on the other hand, are top among the Ijesa traditional gentry. Benjamin Olubode Fagbemi, the author’s father, belonged to the Ogboni chieftaincy family, next in ranking, the book claims, to only the Atakumosa ruling house.

But he was born an avid Christian; and remained a devoted Christian all his life.  As an elder, he become the Baba Ijo of St. John’s Anglican Church, Iloro, Ilesa.

The Ifaturotis too were no less avid Christians than their Fagbemi in-laws, though the Ifaturotis are Methodists as the Fagbemis are Anglicans.

So, aside from Bernice Ifaturoti’s birth, education, marriage, family, her lovely offspring of three boys and three girls alternated in near-perfect order (the last girl came willy-nilly to “balance the rime” years after the couple had decided to halt after three boys and two girls!), the book is also a rich traverse in diverse other areas.

Its brief sorties into Ifaturoti and Fagbemi family histories offer an alluring window into Ijesa royal history, and the Yoruba traditional family, when polygamy, much traduced in today’s world, ruled the roost.

In the Ifaturotis you saw a launch into the Kiriji War (1877-1893). Owa Lowolodu aka Bilasa Owa (of Bilayearere) was king in those troubled times of Yoruba civil war.

He despatched his cousin, the intrepid Adedayo Ifaturoti, to Iwoye-Ijesa as Loja (Baale in general Yoruba; Duke to the English).  His duty was to safeguard Iwoye.

But that firmly established an Ifaturoti royal dynasty in Iwoye-Ijesa (the stool has since been upgraded).  The late Prince Ifaturoti, that contested the Owa throne with Oba Aromolaran, later became the Loja Wasere of Ijana (the stool again, since upgraded).

The author crowed over the royal lineage of her husband: “My husband, on his father’s side, was Omo Owa Bilasa.  On his mother’s side, they were Omo Loja Onibokun.”

That means the Ifaturotis could lay claim to the throne of Iwoye and Ijana, aside from Ilesa, the Ijesa mother-city itself.

The Fagbemis are a tale of glorious polygamy: one husband, nine wives and 23 children.  But the man that started life as a promising bricklayer became a successful master-builder that sent all of his children to school, sans any gender discrimination!

Indeed, one of them, Prof. Olasupo John Fagbemi (of blessed memory), became Nigeria’s first professor of computer science, after being in 1948, one of the pioneering students of the University College Ibadan, on full government scholarship.  He had earlier entered Government College Ibadan, also on scholarship.

But as in too many cases of a country that seems to war against its own very best, Prof. Fagbemi — with his tick-tock mind — was a victim of the Murtala-Obasanjo military government’s purge of the University of Lagos!

Even then, Easter 1990 fetched the grieving widow another life.  Though reluctant to leave her husband’s Methodist creed, she joined The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), where with others, she planted the first-ever RCCG parish in all of Isolo, Lagos — among other RCCG churches, home and abroad.

She recounted, with relish, how at old age she was ordained assistant pastor, after the rigours of Bible school.  She also glowingly spoke of her experience as Jerusalem Pilgrim (JP).

This is a lean autobiography, spiced with pictures that denote family heirlooms.  But like the proverbial dry meat, it rapidly fills the mouth when chewed.

It’s a pleasant and delicious treat!

Abubakar Atiku, former Vice President, entered his PDP presidential nomination run with a simple, if cynical, formula: the Arewa native to retain power for the “North” and reclaim power for the PDP.

Those were would-be personal gains, garnished with collective spice, served with gung-ho relish: first, the Atiku lolly for the “North”; then, the Atiku gravy for PDP: the former ruling party, drawn to power as a mad and furious bull is drawn to red rag.

Indeed, the real “deal” for the PDP, in the Atiku magic playbook, was the “sure banker” of playing ace cynic, spewing humbug, roiling emotions.

You don’t need to promise much; even less, articulate anything.  Just sit down and point fingers at explosive current challenges, to roast the present order — hardly illegitimate in election seasons!

To be sure, the environment was rife for such cynical roasting at the stakes.  Muhammadu Buhari is fulsomely demonized as “abject failure”, on account of security and inflation.  Both tick with emotive grenades!

Insecurity is fleeting difference between life and death — negating the very basis of the Social Contract, the very fundament of government.  Inflation makes the pocket to hurt.  When the stomach rumbles who can think straight?

At Owerri, on his latest visit to Imo State on September 13, PMB self-canonized his efforts, saying his government had done very well, given the pare resources available and the harsh conditions it inherited and continuously found itself — even if those that should say so are not.

Now, that was no flippant claim.  In truth, the media is fairly charged — and rapturously guilty — of flashing up challenges but burying strides.

Witness the on-going uptick in power.  The instinct of the media was to ignore it, until the people themselves started pointing media attention to it in a macabre reversal.

True, a tiny segment may have abandoned their strict professional ethos and hugged blind bias.  A good number plead good, old ethos of circumspection and healthy skepticism, one of the great canons of ethical journalism.

But clearly more than many are yodelling to sweet doom-and-gloom, not unlike up-country yokels easily impressed and misled — a far cry from supposed clinical minds, professionally trained to dig deep and ferret out the truth, no matter the alluring lies.

Journalists in this bind often bluster with sweeping generalizations, which provide soft, fixed but flawed premises, that lead to outrageous conclusions.

But pray, how can you use fixed premises, when the issues you analyze are dynamic, and still think you won’t miss the road by miles?

That’s the media noise that has tried and condemned PMB as “failure”.  Yet, his government, citing what lawyers would call “notorious facts”,  is credited with greatest strides in infrastructure and agriculture since 1999, not to talk of the first comprehensive effort at social safety nets, as a federal programme, in Nigerian history — and all that in season of vanishing cash.

That was the dirty pool Atiku and his PDP were betting to sink their opportunistic snouts until Wike — sorry, Karma — happened!

Since then, the falcon has become stone deaf to the falconer, things have utterly fallen apart, and mere anarchy loosed upon their world, in a neo-Tower of Babel!

Yet, Karma did give enough early warnings.

Read Also: PDP crisis: Wike weighs options as reconciliation moves collapse

Alarmed at Atiku’s northern push and sensing own presidential dream up in smoke, Peter Obi did a quick, double march out of PDP, to find new, if fleeting, anchor in the ever-whoring Labour Party (LP).

Since then, Obi has been spawning funny tales, backed by fancy stats, enrobing himself as glorious new Paul, emergency redeemer of the youth.  Still, cold facts affirm he is nothing but rotten old Saul, proud scion of the old mess.

Only Obi and his most romantic goons fall for this comical pantomime.  Worse: all  are lost in the wilful wilderness of own spiteful creation, from which they have no way out — since each passing day they make, for selves, more foes, not friends.

But the real karma boomed after Obi’s exit: Nyesom Wike, Rivers governor.

Now, let’s get this straight: Atiku’s northern irredentism, as his opportunistic boon to corral the PDP ticket, wasn’t exactly all nonsense, by PDP internal dynamics.

Notorious facts: of the 16 years PDP bossed federal power, the South accounted for a little over 13 years while the North (under the ill-fated Umaru Musa Yar’Adua) had just a little under three years (29 May 2007-5 May 2010).

So, if Atiku galloped into town, raking panicked folks with his belching gun, pissed by a clear northern short-change in the PDP sweepstakes, you can at least understand.

But legitimate as that is, how does it pan against the national optics of another northerner taking power from PMB, after eight straight years?  No sweat, the Atiku camp seems to crow, Arewa has the numbers!

Why, even old man Bode George is crying blue murder and threatening raw thunder, if Ayu, the convenient casus belli, for this Wike-powered intra-PDP war, didn’t “abdicate”, to make for some optical balance!

The little fire Wike lit in Rivers is blazing in the South West, flaring intra-zonal PDP mini-wars.  Who knows where the blaze would hit next, and what new heights it might reach?

Still, would all of these have happened had Atiku picked Wike instead of Ifeanyi Okowa?  That’s Karma, the immutable!

In fairness to Atiku, no one would expect a future commander-in-chief to yoke himself to a braggart-in-chief of Wike’s hue, and expect to rule happily ever after.  Yet, picking the calmer Okowa has fetched him nothing but pre-election catastrophe.

Just one false move — which nevertheless felt like the sane one when it was made — has thrown Atiku and his PDP right at the stakes where they were hoping to roast PMB and his APC!  Karma the immutable!

Atiku gallops into electoral battle on a PDP stallion echoing an out-and-out northern cave: presidential candidate (North), national chair (North) campaign council chair (North)!

It’s the sort of scenario our ace liberal and Teflon reformer would gladly crave a fit, just to zealously point fingers!  Yet, here we are!

Still, it appears morning yet on the day of woe.  Come the elections proper, Obi’s South East children of anger might well go ga-ga, taking their pound of flesh!  The portents are dire.

Nevertheless, do all these put the rival APC in the clear, romping to an easy victory?  Not exactly.  Indeed, not in any way.

The elections would be hard and maybe close.  Still, every party would have to sweat for, and gun, clutch and claw at every single vote.

That would be far better for everyone than spewing Arabic tales from Dubai, or statistical fibs from Samarkand, and beam that your sweet humbug has again scammed the electorate.

The September 6 arrival of Liz Truss, as prime minister of Britain, triggered the original concept of this piece, headlined: “Under two Lizzes”.  It ran thus:

Great Britain or United Kingdom, if you will, now cozies under two Lizzies — the one reigns, the other rules.

The one is the grand old monarch, regal and gracious, Queen Elizabeth 2, 96, of the House of Windsor — every inch, glam and charm; every inch, ever-fresh royalty.

The other, Liz Truss, 47, is latest Tory Prime Minister.  She rules.  The Brits, ever so adept with own tongue, wasted no time in punning the pun: “In Truss they trust”.

The first time such femme double-whammy straddled the Crown and the Commons, a rather chauvinist-minded fellow chirped: “A nation under skirts”.

That was the time of glass ceiling-smashing Margaret Thatcher, aka the milk snatcher.  Theresa May had since repeated that feat.  But this very Liz must have been the most calculating yet, taking serious notes from her two predecessors.

Though at Oxford University she started out as a starry-eyed Liberal Democrat activist (even then calling for the abolition of the Monarchy), she must have set her eyes on the long run, even modelling herself after the gritty “milk snatcher”.  File photos even show Liz Struss dressing like Margaret Thatcher — in symbolic craving for power?

That craving turned sweet reality on September 6, when Ms Truss became Tory Leader and Prime Minister, after defeating Rishi Sunak, in a Tory-wide vote, for Boris Johnson’s job — no thanks to Bo-Jo’s wilful fall on own sword of avoidable scandals.

But Britain “under two Lizzes” collapsed just after two days, with the death of Queen Elizabeth 2 (21 April 1926-8 September 2002) on September 8, after a 70-year illustrious reign (6 February 1952-8 September 2022).

Now, how would history dub Liz Truss — Liz the Undertaker or Liz the Restorer?  It’s really hard to say!

Still, the entry and exit timelines of Elizabeth 2 are rather instructive.

In 1952, she opened her reign with the great Winston Churchill, Britain’s World War 2 hero, and Nazi Adolf Hitler’s greatest nightmare.

Churchill was the first of Her Majesty’s 15 prime ministers — and that prime servant of the British state just couldn’t contemplate the collapse of the British Empire: the greediest imperial machine ever; and clearly the most soulless disruptor and subjugator of other races and cultures, weaving annoying cant to whitewash its material and cultural crimes.

But just two days after Liz Truss dawned — the last of the 15 — the grand living mascot of that empire, the Queen, was herself history!  Liz the Undertaker?

Before Her Majesty’s passage, the Empire had all but collapsed, though it left flickering ash in the so-called Commonwealth of Nations — a most cynical coinage of political cant, given how the British Empire plundered these subject dominions: from Nigeria to Kenya and its “Mau-Mau” scars; Canada to Australia, and their aborigines’ massacre; Jamaica to Barbados, twin-echoes of plantation slaves and slave drivers.

Indeed, the Caribbean duo — Jamaica and Barbados — are the present open sore of Britain’s past greed.  Most of the Black folks there were West African natives shipped into tilling British plantations, at the high moon of slave trade, the high crime regretfully aided and abetted by Africans’ own evil and greedy powers and principalities!

At 21, in a speech she gave at Cape Town in South Africa, the future Queen Elizabeth committed her life, short or long, to serving “our great imperial family” — which she did.

To start with, there is nothing great about imperialism or any family or clan pushing such power robbery, soulless domination, seizure of other people’s wealth, and destruction of other people’s dreams.

That holds true for the Yoruba Oyo Empire, preying on weaker kingdoms of the same ethnic stock; as it does for the British and other European empires and colonial machines, smashing other races for material capture.

Read Also: Thousands line Queen’s coffin route to pay final respects in Scotland

But for good or for ill, that was the lot of the British state and its reigning Windsors.  That was perhaps underscored by the 4 April 1581 knighting of Sir Francis Drake, by Queen Elizabeth 1.

To the Spaniards, Sir Francis was a ruthless pirate.  But at the British Isles, he was a golden boy, knighted on his vessel, the Golden Hind, as the first to circumnavigate the earth from 1577 to 1580.  British history is replete with such whited sepulchres that leave a peculiar taste in the mouth!

Still the Queen, and her Biblical lifetime of three scores and ten-long reign, epitomized decency, humility, grace and humanity.  How could such abiding grace sit over such a ferocious, nefarious, greedy and plundering machine?

Then, her stoic grace as the empire started crumbling, virtually — and mostly — on Her Majesty’s head.

First, was the fall of the British Raj (1858-1947)  — the prized British India and Far East pearl, largely spanning present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. But that happened under her father, King George VI, five years before Elizabeth 2 mounted the throne.

At last, Churchill’s cruelest nightmare was unfolding: the sun was setting on the British Empire!  Some ringing paradox, though: how could Churchill rally global opposition against Nazi domination, yet kid himself British imperialism was made of a nobler hue?

Then, the fitful independence of other African colonies, among which Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana had the distinction of being the first, in 1957.

Yet, with Bo-Jo’s self-destruct, a grand epochal censure loomed before the Queen and the British White establishment.  Four of the eight angling for Bo-Jo’s job were offspring of these same races British imperialism had ravaged and destroyed!

Indeed, in Rishi Sunak, though now rippling all-Brit, loomed the British Raj, about settling grand historical scores!  The grand disruptor about being grandly disrupted?

Why, even our own “Nigerian” girl, Kemi Badenoch, was talking the talk, until she threw the country of her parents’ birth under the bus.  The Brits sighted her cant and promptly guillotined her dreams!

Still, imagine a girl, from the uppity Yoruba of British Nigerian colonization, invited by Her Majesty to boss 10 Downing Street?  The Brits self-downing by own past mishaps?

But then, entered Liz the Restorer, the Brit come to save the blushes!  Two days later, the Queen herself took the final flight!

Elizabeth 2’s grace and decorum did nuance Britain’s imperial and colonial crimes.  But Charles 3 is fated to grapple with them, for they won’t go away — home or abroad.

Indeed, “British” imperialism is no more than English domination.  Not unlike the Oyo Empire where the Yoruba preyed on own stock before ravaging and savaging others, that grim fact was clear from the epochal cries, down the ages, of the Scot, the Welsh and the Irish.  Just as well the new king referenced this ugly history in his first speech, though sterilized!

Adieu, Queen Elizabeth 2!  Farewell, the second Elizabethan Age!

July 27.  Like a general being pulled out after eons on the battle front, Toni Anthony Ogunde began the first stage of his exit from the Yaba Art front, at 65, in 2023.

The curators dubbed the show “Kaleidoscope: An exhibition and discourse on the practice of Toni Anthony Ogunde”.   It was at the Yusuf Grillo Art Gallery, Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech), Nigeria’s first-ever tertiary institution.

Kaleidoscope was, indeed, an art exhibition of history, trends, culture, evolution and well, deep and punishing thinking, though expressed in strokes of all moods: colourful and bright; dark and dank.

But on the day, another epic irony played out: a regal custodian of African tradition was a victim of “African time” — a contemporary vice, though blamed on Africa’s past.

Indeed, in Camara Laye’s The Raddiance of the King, the author tried to romanticize the flexible African concept of time, in the Euro-African culture clash of that novel.

But here, an African King, real life, chaffed at that notoriety of non-punctuality, which the modern elite nevertheless blithely blame on their “African” past.  On that, they expect everyone to understand.

Well, Oba Adebisi Okubanjo, the Obiri of Ayepe-Ijebu, in Ogun State, didn’t — and he showed it with dignified royal unease.  To honour the celebrator, a boyhood friend and classmate at the Odogbolu Grammar School, Odogbolu (OGS), he had left his kingdom at around 6:30 am, for an event slated for 11 am.

When Ripples breezed into the venue, roughly around 11 am, the Kabiyesi was already seated.  Light music was on; and guests were already filling up the space.  Yet, the event was nowhere near starting — the lateness blamed on some clash of meetings.

Oba Okubanjo was billed to attend a 1 pm meeting at the palace of the Awujale of Ijebu Ode, the paramount ruler of the Ijebu. But to accommodate his Lagos Kaleidoscope engagement, he had asked that the meeting be pushed to 3 pm.

Yet, it was well-neigh 1 pm — almost two hours late — and the Kabiyesi still patiently waited.  Meanwhile, Alaba Olusoga and Ripples, made up the OGS early birds.  Deji Cole, another old mate, would breeze in much later.

Mercifully, the event started around 1 pm, after Obafemi Omokungbe, an engineer and Yabatech Rector, strode in.  It was the sole dark patch on an otherwise glorious day.

But even as the wait wore on, a video clip served the guests what would pass for Toni Anthony’s answer to James Joyce’s alter-ego biography: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

As soft music played, the clips beamed the many landmarks, personal and career, of the artist and dress non-conformist — the bohemian ethos of the artists’ commune.

Even then, one clip stood out: the artist’s meeting with the Great Alhaji Lateef Jakande, iconic journalist and visionary 2nd Republic Lagos Governor.

It was ode to glorious symbiosis — the artist impacting his environment as much as the environment had impacted him.  That, of course, was the “meat” of the rich visual exhibition to shortly follow.

From the starting point, though late, Kaleidoscope offered nothing but sumptuous and filling visual feast.

For starters, the exhibitor’s many monikers were as kaleidoscopic as his bewildering oeuvre of cross-media art: Ogunde.  Otunba. Comrade.  King of boys. Toni Anthony.  Salt of the soil … all endearing terms.

To be sure, Ogunde is no alias.  That’s his real name: Anthony Bandele Ogunde.  But perhaps only the Oko-Oke boys, his old classmates, would call him that: just Ogunde.

Not Dele, his first name.  Never Anthony, his baptismal — who even knew that, at the bloom of boyhood; at the cusp of teens: the age of questioning and experimentation; the epoch of rebellion?

The monikers belonged to a latter era: the Yaba years.  Ogunde’s elder brother testified at the event that “King of Boys” might have dated back to his sibling’s student days, when he lived in the boys’ quarters of an uncle’s official quarters, on the Yabatech campus — a facility the free and feisty soul threw open to all and sundry.

Otunba.  Salt of the soil.  Toni Anthony would later segue into the artist’s large presence, on Yaba Art’s very wide canvas, in the unending dialogue between the Gown, from where Toni Anthony’s strokes jutted out; and the Town, the community that the painter moulded into endless experimentations and improvisations, as decreed by his creative muse, in bouts after bouts of creative perspiration.

That much was clear from the pieces of audacious art on display.

The very first, “Kuru pa kuru”, beams ram fighting, a sporty yet dangerous treat on the Lagos landscape — cultural kaleidoscope? — each time the Ileya Muslim festival was in the air.

Now, that could be lethal sports!  Many a youth preened and crowed over their champion ram, which somehow had out-butted and subdued others.  But other youths sometimes turned their festive homes into grief when it all turned fatal — and their ill-fated ram, near-fatally butted, is rushed to the slaughter, with life seeping out of it!

The artist captured that grim, bitter-sweet drama in simple black-and-white strokes.

But perhaps the most densely poetic, yet ultra-simple in colourful strokes, is “Dele-Cases” — the tragedy of three “Deles”, as creatively captured by another Dele, from his artistic observatory.

He pushed the linguistic pun of: “Dele” for “daily”, to tell a grim but simple tale: many of Nigeria’s daily tragedies need not happen!  That remarkable piece of telling symbolism birthed in 1989.

In “Dele-Cases”, the academic cap symbolized the late Prof. Dele Awojobi, the University of Lagos mechanical engineering whiz, who practically cut short his illustrious life, by “over-thinking” the Nigerian quagmire, during the 2nd Republic (1979-1983).

The fountain pen symbolized that avant-garde journalist, Dele Giwa, among the quad that introduced weekly newsmagazine journalism into the Nigerian market, with the flagship Newswatch, now defunct.  Dele Giwa was parcel-bombed, during the Ibrahim Babaginda junta (1985-1993) — a brazen murder yet to be resolved.

The third symbol, an athlete’s spike shoe, sunk in blood-stained grass, belonged to Dele Udoh, a patriot and star athlete, cut short by rogue police bullets!

The three were yoked together in common but avoidable tragedy!  But they were lucky to have another “Dele” sketch out their odyssey in sombre yet brilliant art — “Dele-Cases”!

“Otunba’s flair for crowdedness is brought to bear in the harvest brush strokes of colours,” wrote Pius Ehita Egiolamhen, PhD, Dean, School of Art Design and Printing, Yabatech, in a special commemorative brochure, “which are composed into a visual language to provoke, instigate and inspire …”

Kaleidoscope delivered on all these fronts — and more.  Toni Anthony proved that he indeed learnt at the feet of Prof. Yusuf Grillo, Dr. Kolade Oshinowo and the very best of Yaba School of Art.  But Gown or Town, the artistic feast goes on.

As at 2014, Boko Haram’s “Islamic State” Caliphate controlled an area about the size of the five South East states, with all the administrative and operational structures, foreign recognition and partnership with other such fundamentalist terror groups across the world.

Today, the caliphate has long ceased to exist, despite strong support from global networks to revive it as a success story of fundamentalist insurgency. The war is not yet over, but the insurgents have been knocked out of control, degraded and caged within some fringe areas of the North East. That is a remarkable success story by any standard, even though it has been slow and steady over seven years.

South Africa’s corporate mercinary group (private army), in partnership with Nigerian military, first proved what is doable by knocking out the insurgents’ key operational and administrative structures in less than three months of relentless attacks in the early months of 2015. Many Boko Haram fighting units were either decimated or withdrew intact to remote forest areas to escape being hit.

When the new Federal  Government came to power in 2015, it disengaged the mercenary group on the ground of national pride that Nigerian troops could do it alone. Boko Haram immediately launched desperate bids to retake their lost grounds, just as Nigerian troops consolidated on the success achieved by the mercenaries. Slowly but steadily, they pushed the insurgents out of their key areas. Thus, Boko Haram never recovered enough to re-establish its caliphate till date.

Meanwhile, the insurgents were dissipating some of their fighters from the North East and relocating them to other places, particularly the big forests in North West and North Central, to team up and partner with pre-existing bandit groups in these areas to launch raids and attacks, abduct victims, and march them to the insurgents’ forest dens to negotiate for ransom.

The security forces have not been able to offer effective response to this pattern. There have been a few success stories against the terrorist bandits.  But for the most part, the criminals are in control and making huge money from ransom payment,  becoming stronger, better armed and launching more audacious attacks, while the security forces look virtually helpless.

Abuja, the nation’s capital, and its environs, have come under successful audacious attacks by the terrorist bandits.

The Service chiefs and heads of other security agencies have gotten accustomed to the old ways. They are not innovative enough to land appreciable breakthroughs.

 

Case study

In the 1990s, a Russian passenger train was hijacked on its way from Kazakhstan, and was diverted towards Chechnya.  The hijackers threatened to blow up the train if there was any interference. But Russian troops launched an operation.

A couple of crop-dusting planes (the type used to spray insecticide on large wheat farms) were sent with heavy loads of choking tear-gas to smoke the train along its rail route.  A couple of fighter jets hovered at higher altitude to engage any opportunity target. Mobile troops were also placed in strategic locations along the train route.

That destabilized both the hijackers and the passengers; and the train could not be processed as planned before the troops swooped on them. Some hijackers were killed. Some managed to escape but were later caught. A few passengers died or were wounded in the melee.

The Kaduna-Abuja train attack and kidnapping of 24 March 2022

Within 24 hours, there were clues as to the location of the terrorist bandits and their kidnap victims. Imagine if the security troops had attacked the location(s) within one or two days, first bombarding the area with choking tear-gas, or fire from artillery guns or by advancing ground troops in armoured fighting vehicles, with a couple of helicopter gunships hovering overhead to engage opportunity targets!

If it is night operation, appropriate illumination bombs (which are like pyrotechnics) would be used to light up the target area(s). Both the terrorists and their captives would be destabilised as the troops with protective gear swoop on them. The troops would have a medical team prepared to resuscitate kidnap victims with respiratory problem arising from tear-gas effect.

Such operation could not be completely free of collateral damage, but the idea is to keep it to the barest minimum. The bigger picture is to hit hard at the terrorist bandits and severely degrade their capacity to mount such a large-scale operation, if not wipe out that particular group.

As far back as the early 1970s, American troops in Vietnam had used air-sprayed Agent Orange, a gaseous spay, to defoliate thick jungles and make it possible to see hidden structures and human habitation from air surveillance. The leafs will drop off the trees in two to three days. In present day, better versions of the gas, with less effect on the environment, are available in the international market, and can be produced by any big pharmaceutical company.

 

Kuje, Abuja, Prison Attack of July 2022

About 200 well-armed terrorist bandits marched to the place at night and successfully attacked the prison, freed over 500 inmates, including more than 60 of their colleagues being detained there.

Consider that within 10 minutes of the incident, all the people that matter in Abuja security circle must have heard about it through phone calls or signal message.  But they had no immediate response. Neither was there a viable contingency plan.

It took over two hours to send reinforcement troops when the terrorists had finished and gone. This is unbelievable, happening in Abuja, the seat of power. The Service chiefs and their subordinate commanders, particularly those entrusted with the security of Abuja, should hide their faces in shame.

 

 Way forward

In governance, there are some areas that may require the government to partner with the private sector to achieve the desired goal. That is called public-private-partnership (PPP).

PPP is sometimes applicable to security operations, particularly in developing nations that don’t have top-notch technological wherewithal. There are foreign technical teams that have the expertise, the right connection and the tools to do the job.

They could use their links to guide an orbiting spy satellite to zoom in on an area of interest and transmit actionable real-time intelligence through some short-cut or back-door channel or by poaching; and such information would be passed to security forces on the ground.

There are certain classified details and special tools usually difficult for the government to acquire through the normal bureaucratic processes, even with strict conditions for usage. But like internet hackers, specialist private operatives, who had worked in the system and understood it, and know how to breach it, can.

The government should not continue to stick to some primitive pride and arrogance against seeking outside help, when the situation keeps deteriorating rapidly.

 

• Azubike Nass, a retired colonel from the Nigerian Army, writes from Enugu. In 1994, Col. Nass established the Nigerian Army Counter-Terrorist Training Wing in Jaji, Kaduna State.

The Kashim Shettima unveiling, on July 20, threw out of joint the nose of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN); and that of other ethnic bigots.

Both went berserk over a bomb from Shettima — devastating to them, pleasant to non-bigots: that Paul Ojukwu, an Igbo Christian from Southern Nigeria, is Shettima’s adopted son!

Paul is proud beneficiary of rare “Muslim” charity done in utmost privacy 15-years ago, by the part-holder of CAN’s “hated” Muslim-Muslim ticket!  Abomination!

Though from Shettima the Muslim, isn’t that akin to Christ-like charity: that bit about not letting your left hand know what your right hand is giving?  But for the holy hate of CAN and co, would Shettima ever have gone public on this 15-year-old benevolence — and still counting?

Besides, CAN wilted at the sight of Christian clerics at the Shettima presentation, despite its theocratic decree!  But it turned its deep angst into cheap bluff and bluster.

So panic-stricken, and in concert with its hysterical social media confederates, CAN crunched its many sour grapes, which further set its teeth on edge!  With that it growled and screeched, hoping its row would drown the reality it hates to see!

So long for CAN that rolled out a “fatwa” it couldn’t enforce!    As all the waters of the Atlantic could not wash the blood off the regicidal hands of Shakespeare’s evil Lady Macbeth, all the cacophony of lies on social media won’t block out CAN’s well-earned shame.

It’s a fair price to pay for the so-called men of God, preening as imperious gods of men, decreeing political choices for co-citizens, in a 21st century democracy!

This naked dance of CAN is somewhat reminiscent of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work, Prologue to Canterbury Tales, a biting satire on Catholic England in Medieval times.  Christendom sure has a chequered history of its most rotten preening as its finest!

In Canterbury Tales, the most discounted was the Parson, tenderer of a humble, near-unknown, rural parish.  Yet, only him, followed the biblical straight and narrow path.

Among the most celebrated, among the Papal establishment on the pilgrimage, were the Pardoner and the Summoner.  The Pardoner boasted his bag choked with papal pardons, “hot, fresh and smoking from Rome.”  For a hefty fee, you could obtain those holy pardons!

For the Summoner, of the papal Police, just imagine the “wetin you carry” policemen of today, degraded a thousand times!  That was the Summoner’s level of illicit hustle, while dragooning poor locals to the holy court!

Faced with all of the celebrated abuse in the holy court, the meek Parson gifted the most immortal quote from the entire work: “If gold rusts, what will iron do?”

That is a fair poser today to CAN — and, of course, to the Nigerian media: for its lowest-common-denominator thinking, at a very delicate juncture where it ought to put its supposed acute mind and critical thinking on high alert but is failing on every front.

If you think that’s harsh, just contrast how BBC Hausa Service treated the row over the “unknown bishops” with how the Nigerian media treated the same subject.

With BBC’s permission, juxtapose the answers to questions, to a “real” and “fake” bishop, by the BBC Hausa service:

Reverend John Joseph Hayab, Kaduna CAN chairman and acting chairman of CAN in the 19 northern states: “They are not bishops. We don’t know them. They are charlatans hired to show that they have support. If you are a Christian, you know how Christian clergy wear their garb. Some of them are Christians.  Some are not even Christians.”  In other words, the gown makes the monk!

Pastor Edward Williams, one of the so-called “fake” bishops: “We are real pastors. If they say we are fake pastors, that’s their opinion. Pastorship is God’s calling, not Man’s calling. When God called us, they were not there. Only God can say who’s a real pastor.”

Still on fakery: BBC to Hayab: “Are you saying all of them are fake?”

Hayab: “If they are not fake, let them tell us their churches.”

Williams’ riposte on how Christian clergy wear their garb: “That’s nonsense — just media hype.”

These are instructive sound bytes from two supposed men of God: the one celebrated, the other scorned; the one brash and loud, the other gentle and reasonable.

Track back to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: you could see that the spirit of the Pardoner/Summoner — brash, unconscionable and pompous as they come, still lives in CAN, just as that of the humble and meek Parson lives in the so-called “fake bishops”!

It took CAN’s reckless dance, in the market of high-wire politics and politicking, to once again expose this dirty underbelly.

Still, Ripples is not necessarily perturbed by CAN.  It’s a hubris-stricken collective, which seems unable to learn from history and is therefore fated to be consumed by it.

Four years ago, the trio of Catholic Bishop Matthew Kukah, Winners’ Bishop David Oyedepo (both among Christendom Nigeria’s twinkling stars) and Islamic cleric, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, went to Abeokuta to plead Atiku Abubakar’s case, not with voters but with arch-narcissist, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and his eternal, elephantine grudge against Atiku.  Eventually, the voters ignored them and their comedy.

Months after, Kukah would rave and Oyedepo would bawl, under the guise of public-spirited citizen commentary from their elevated pulpits.  But the election was lost and won!

Since President Goodluck Jonathan thrust CAN into his failed re-election run of 2015, CAN has catapulted itself on the political road to perdition.  It may yet meet another crunchy comeuppance in 2023.

Without prejudice to Christian’s legitimate interest and worry over a presidential ticket that excludes one of their own, Nigeria’s challenges are beyond the colour of a ticket.  It’s the substance that should interest — and worry — voters.

This is where the Nigerian media, always following the herd it should shepherd, constitutes a greater menace.

The following quote from Sadeeq Shehu’s Facebook post, on the Nigerian media’s poor interrogation of the “fake bishops” row, contrasted to BBC Hausa’s, just underscores the contempt many readers, listeners and viewers hold their home media:

“Hear question from one of Nigerian journalists from The Whistler as he pursued one of the ‘unknown bishops’: What can you tell Nigerians as a Christian that you’re attending this event? You don’t want to talk to Nigerians? Are you supporting Muslim- Muslim ticket? Shameless and unprofessional!”  Flat and pedestrian too!

Yet, it’s such a delicate juncture which compels the media to ask the right questions and report in the right contexts.  Otherwise, they would lead voters to perdition and start all over again their trademark listless wailing they self-servingly dub “criticism”.

Meanwhile, enough of the row over “Muslim-Muslim” ticket.  Time to focus on real issues.